Kindly Calm Me Down
by SereneCalamity
Summary: Will is still dealing with a lot, even ten years after all the Upside Down craziness. Mike helps to calm things down. Byler. Oneshot.


**So I'm not the biggest fan of Meghan Trainor. But I _adore_ this song, it came up on my Spotify and I didn't know who it was by and I fell in love. And I just adore these boys in general.**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or the title.**

Things always got worse this time of year.

They were still getting better, year by year, as time went by, but there was always a dip in Will Byers' mental health when it came to November.

Through high school, he had all of his friends and he had Joyce and Jonathan Byers and Chief Hopper who surrounded him constantly, always making sure he was okay, to the point where it got a little frustrating at times. He also had Nancy Wheeler and Steve Harrington, who would come by and check in on him, both together and separately, and Will tried to insist that he didn't need people baby-sitting and they would just reply that they cared which is why they were showing up to see how he was.

Will _knew_ that they cared, but sometimes he just needed some space to figure things out on his own.

Or he just needed one person, because that person knew exactly what he needed and how much attention he needed and when to give him the time alone he needed.

Mike Wheeler.

They were twenty-two now, it had been two years since he had first gone missing, November 6th, 1983. The whole party was doing pretty well, and the 'honorary' party members as well, the older three and Joyce and Chief Hopper.

Dustin Henderson had gone to college in San Diego. He had spent two years studying for a degree in psychology before sending the next two years doing a teaching degree. And then he had gone back to Hawkins, which no one had expected of him. He got a job at the primary school there, where they had all gone when they were younger, and it was funny hearing about the things that he was now telling kids off for doing, when they had done _so much_ worse back when they were the students. There was another young teacher there, a girl named Suki Underhill with long blonde hair and big blue eyes, who was a little socially awkward when it came to adults, but came alive with her class of five and six year olds. She was completely obsessed with Japanese manga, after living there for a year with a friend, and so Dustin was trying to read as much as he could get his hands on in a hope to shift their friendship up to a proper relationship.

Eleven 'Jane' Hopper had ended up being a bit of a wandering spirit. She had never been able to get into school, even with the help from the party and Nancy, and that was understandable, since she had never attended a school before, and a tightly regimented learning environment about things that she really didn't view as exciting or even important. So she ended up giving up on school after only being in for a year, which Chief Hopper reluctantly agreed to only if she got herself a job so that she wasn't moping around the house all day. She got a job with a friend of Hopper's who had a bricking business, and she had a lot of fun doing it. But when her friends all graduated high school and started moving on to the next part of their life, she decided she wanted to see the world. Right now, she was in Sweden with these two girls that she had met in India. Her relationship with both of them was a little complicated, but her friends and family were just happy that she was happy. She would be flying back for Christmas in Hawkins, which was only a month or so away, and the party—especially a nosey Max Mayfield—had a lot of questions about the pretty brunette and the bouncy blonde that El was spending so much of her life with.

Steve had stayed in Hawkins for a few years after he had graduated— _barely_ —working for his father with his father at his architecture firm. Steve didn't have a degree in architecture—nor was he planning on getting on—so he spent most of the day just doing assistant like stuff, which was mind numbingly boring. He hung out a lot with the party, although not many people his own age, since a lot of them had already moved on. For the first year, there was Nancy and Jonathan, but that was a bit awkward, given their history. At least, it _was,_ until Jonathan had come back from Los Angeles to spend the summer after his first year of studying there, and the pair of them had gotten close. _Very_ close. And then the summer had ended and he had gone back to Los Angeles with Jonathan to live with him and Nancy, and one thing lead to another, and now the three of them were properly together, and Steve was working for a building company, already finished with his apprenticeship and moving up in the ranks, and he loved it. And then two years ago, Nancy had had a baby boy with sandy coloured hair and bright green eyes.

Nancy had gotten a scholarship for chemistry, and had studied in California to become a pharmacist, and then did a post graduate in clinical pharmacy. She had good job now, living in Los Angeles in an apartment that cost more than her parents whole house had. Her nightmares had lessened over the years, but she still went to see a therapist once a week, tweaking her story only slightly so as not to give away the full truth about the Upside Down. She was pretty sure she would be committed if she did that. She was living the life with both of her boyfriends, sending lots of photo's to her family via the post, since her parents still didn't use email—they had only gotten the internet the Christmas before, and that was because Mike had insisted and paid for installation, and had then spent painstaking hours to show them what to do. A lot of the photos featured Jonathan and Steve, and then over the past two years, they were almost all of Niall Wheeler. The three didn't know who the father was, given his colouring was so similar to Nancy's, and they honestly didn't care. He had parts of personalities from each of his three parents, and all of them completely doted on him.

Jonathan had studied photography at a small arts school that wasn't quite a university, however he had still been able to drawn down a student loan for it. It meant that he had more flexible hours, so he was able to work almost full time hours, which helped a lot when Nancy was studying full time and only able to work weekends and a few nights a week around her studying. It had felt strange being away from Hawkins and being completely independent of the responsibilities that he had shouldered for so long, and it felt even stranger not having Steve around. He couldn't explain it, it just did. And so he had gone back for one of the breaks, while Nancy had stayed to work, and things had just clicked between him and Steve. They had kissed the day before Jonathan was due to return to Los Angeles, and that seemed to be the prompt for Steve to come back with him. It had been a little awkward at first, but there was a lot more acceptance for relationships out of the ordinary in California than there was in Hawkins, and they made it work. And when Niall came along, Jonathan had never been happier. Niall laughed freely like Steve, cared deeply like Nancy and stared curiously like Jonathan. He was a part of all of them, and the three parents were completely enamored.

Maxine had broken up with Lucas Sinclair the day before they had graduated high school. He was staying in Hawkins and she wanted to get as far away from there as possible. Turned out, she didn't go all that far, although it was still an eleven hour drive, ending up in New York and doing a degree in nursing. Lucas joined her a year after she had her degree, just a few months ago, and the pair were solid, now that they were both set in their careers and the direction they wanted in life, and things looked as though they were going to go well. She was working in one of the biggest hospitals in the city, and her hours were all over the place, but they were only living a few blocks away from Will and Mike, and so the four of them met up quite often for drinks or lunch, when their schedules allowed for it.

Lucas had been offered a mechanical engineering apprenticeship a few months before they finished high school. He began working at the garage after school and in the weekends to get his practical hours jump started, and once they graduated, he began working there full time. He had always wanted to work with engines, and so when the job had been offered to him, he would have been an idiot to turn it down. They worked tractor and truck engines, sometimes cars if there was an antique, and Lucas enjoyed what he did. But after finishing his apprenticeship, and going to New York to see Max graduate with her nursing degree, he couldn't get rid of the gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach. He asked Will and Mike if he could come and live with them for a few months while he got things sorted, and they had agreed. He had been there all of two weeks before he and Max had gotten back together, another week before he had found himself a job, and then only another three before he and Max decided to find somewhere of their own.

And then there was Will and Mike.

Will started a psychology degree as well, like Dustin, but after a year, he had dropped out of university all together to work. He had gotten a job with painting company who worked in residential properties and smaller commercial spaces, and he actually really enjoyed it. It was only meant to be something that paid the bills until he found something he wanted to do more, or maybe go back to university, but he was happy with what he was doing, so he kept on doing it. He had a good boss, who enrolled him with a trades school to get his apprenticeship, and he had finished it just a few months ago, getting a decent pay rise with that as well. Overall, he was doing pretty well, and every year that passed, things were getting better, but each November wasn't without its hiccup. A few years ago, after some gentle nudging from his boyfriend and mother, he finally started seeing a therapist and had sleeping pills for when he needed them and anti-anxiety medication for when things got bad. He didn't like the fact that he needed them, but he knew that they helped, and so he took them. Maybe he would get to a point in his life where he wouldn't need them, but he wasn't there yet.

Mike hadn't gone to college. He had always thought that he would, that had always been the plan, but when it came time to enroll, he just couldn't find something that really fit. Admittedly, he wasn't looking very hard, which his parents weren't happy about, but he still moved to New York with Will, to be with him when he started his own studies. He got an apprenticeship as an electrician, and by the time he had finished, he had worked his way up to being a supervisor as well, something that was surprisingly easy, given he had been trying to keep his party in line for years in the unofficial place as their leader. Mike dealt with his own demons by running, a lot of running, and smoking a bit more than he should. But a lot of the time, he just liked looking after Will, and making sure that _he_ was okay.

"Will?" Mike called out as he unlocked the door to their apartment. "You home?" There was the heavy smell of recently smoked weed in the air and Mike pushed his fingers through his damp hair that was sticking to his forehead. He had been at the gym with Max—she always managed to out run him on the treadmill—and had showered there, since the showers there were so much better than the tiny stall that they had in their apartment. They had started looking at new apartments recently, but Will got anxiety at the idea of being in a new place when they were so settled in the one that they were in now, and Mike had no problems with staying. They liked their apartment, it just had a few quirks that made it more interesting to live in.

"Hey," Will looked up from where he was tucked in the window seat in the lounge area. He was still small, even though they were twenty-two now, he was five foot five against Mike's six foot one, and he was still all skin and bones, even though he ate healthily, and he looked even smaller when he was wearing Mike's flannel shirts, like he was now. The blue, grey and white shirt was unbuttoned and he had it wrapped around him like a blanket, his knees pulled up to his chest.

"Everything alright?" Mike asked as he walked over to Will, dropping a kiss to his forehead.

"Fine," Will replied, a little too quickly. Mike didn't say anything though, just sat down on the edge of the window seat and shuffled Will around, so that Will's feet were on his lap. They were cold, although Will's feet and hands always were. Mike rubbed them with his big hands and Will let out a sigh of appreciation. "Just a bad day at work," Will expanded.

"Okay," Mike hummed out, letting Will go at his own pace.

"And you know I hate November," he added quietly as Mike shifted his position so that he could tuck his thumbs under Will's foot and gently massage the arch.

"I do," Mike agreed. Will didn't say anything for a long stretch of time, and Mike stayed quiet as well, just rubbing Will's feet, warming them up, until Will pulled them away and shifted them underneath him, knees pressing into the thin cushions they had put on the window seat and lifting himself up a little so that he was actually eye-to-eye with Mike. His eyes were a little blood shot from the weed, and his lips were pinker than usual and a little shiny, Mike noted, so he was guessing that he had lip gloss on them.

He always liked when Will let himself wear lip gloss or eyeliner or painted him nails. It meant that he was taking time for himself, and doing something that made him happy, not caring what other people thought.

Plus, he looked ridiculously attractive with it on.

Mike lifted his thumb and pressed it gently to the corner of Will's mouth. Will's eyes fluttered shut and he leaned his head to the side, into Mike's touch. Mike stroked his thumb over Will's cheek before cupping his jaw and tucking his thumb behind the smaller boys ear, cradling the side of his face. Will opened his eyes just enough to make contact with Mike's and his lips tipped upwards in a gentle smile, and Mike smiled back, in that way that made his eyes shine and his whole face light up, and when Mike smiled at him like that, Will just couldn't help but smile bigger, it was just a natural bodily reaction for him.

He just loved Mike so much, and Mike adored him and had no problem in showing it, and he always made Will feel better.

Just like now, when he knew that Will had a lot weighing on his shoulders, he didn't push him to talk about it, like Will's mum and brother and even Nancy and Dustin sometimes did. He just waited until Will was ready to talk, and until then, he would just be there, to make sure he didn't feel alone.

"You want to order Chinese and watch _Dirty Dancing_?" Mike asked after a few moments, the fingers that were cupping his jaw reaching to play with Will's hair. "And then we could put on _Grease_ afterwards?" Will couldn't but smile, because Mike absolutely hated _Grease_ , but he would watch it because he knew how much Will loved it. He didn't mind _Dirty Dancing_ as much, because he thought that Patrick Swayze was hot, so he was glad that it was Will's favourite movie.

"You're perfect," Will breathed out, leaning forward and pressing his mouth against Mike's. Mike's mouth was pliant and let Will lead the way, control the kiss even though Mike was generally the more dominant one. Will pushed himself up on his knees even more so that he was taller than Mike and Mike had to tip his head backwards so that his head was towards Will. Will shuffled forward and there was some awkward movements and Mike let out a huff of laughter and Will giggled against Mike's mouth as they rearranged themselves so that Mike's legs were stretched out along the window seat and Will straddled them, his knees on either side, pressed against Mike's hips. "Seriously," Will nipped at Mike's lower lip as he twined his arms around Mike's neck. "I couldn't be doing this without you. Couldn't be doing _anything_." Mike stilled under Will's kisses and the smaller boy pulled back.

"You would be fine without me, Will," Mike's voice was low but serious. "You're so much stronger than you think." Will didn't agree with him, because Mike was his rock, but Mike was always saying this to him, telling him that he was strong and he was brave and he could deal with so much more than he gave himself credit for.

Either way, whether Mike was right or now, Will never wanted to find out.

"I don't care," Will mumbled, nudging his nose against Mike's, his lips brushing against Mike's cheeks. "I don't care if I'm strong or weak or _whatever_ , I just want you here with me, always." Will wasn't far enough back to see Mike's smile, but he felt it under his mouth as he dropped his lips down for another kiss, and he loved that he was the one making Mike smile.

"And I'm always gonna be here," Mike promised between kisses, and Will's fingers tightened in Mike's hair, in the curls that were getting a lot longer, nearly at his shoulders now. He rolled his hips forward, purposefully over Mike's crotch, and he felt Mike's body shudder underneath his, so he did it again and again. One of Mike's hands slipped underneath his flannel shirt that Will was wearing and scratched lightly at Will's back, making his lover shiver at the sensations. Mike's hand stroked up and down his back, and Will let out a sigh, dropped his mouth from Mike's so that he could take in a few deep breaths.

Will was so small that he could curve himself forward and practically curl into a ball on Mike's lap, and as Mike's big hands stroked his back and the other rubbed up and down his thigh, he shivered at the feeling of being so small yet looked after and safe in Mike's lap. He rested his forehead on Mike's shoulder, the pair of them setting a rhythm between themselves, rolling their hips together, both of them hard against the material that was separating them. Will was only in sweatpants, but Mike was in jeans, and they were stiff and didn't give him much room to move, and so Will reached out to undo his button and zipper.

" _Shit_ ," Mike sighed against the side of Will's head, into his hair at the feeling of Will's fingers brushing against his cock through the material of his briefs. Will pulled at the elastic band of Mike's briefs and circled his fingers around his cock as best he could. "Shit, Will...Sweetheart." Will felt a shiver run down him at the term of endearment and at the feeling of Mike's pulse in his hand, wet and hard and smooth. From his position, so high up on Mike's thighs, he couldn't quite reach all the way down to wrap his hand right around the base of Mike's cock, but he didn't want to move back and put more distance between them, so he just did the best he could. He swiped at the pre-cum that was leaking from the head of Mike's cock, using it as lube, pumping his hand up and down slowly, loving the sharp intakes of breath from his lover.

Mike moved his hips in time with Will's motions and he let his head fall back against the wall behind him, his pale neck bared to Will. Will turned his head to the side and pressed his lips against the side of Mike's neck, his tongue flicking out and licking the skin there. Mike let out a moan and then his hand moved from Will's thigh and pulled back the elastic of his sweatpants. Will straightened up to give Mike more room and also so that he could see his boyfriend.

"No underwear?" Mike smirked at Will and Will just fought to keep his eyes open so that he was watching Mike as the curly haired man brushed the backs of knuckles against Will's cock, sending another shiver through him. Mike teased for a bit, just touching him gently, fingers stroking at Will's lower stomach and then slipping under his cock and stroking through his pubic hair, cupping his balls and giving them a little squeeze, feeling Will writhe on his lap. He leaned forward and kissed him again, and now that they were so close, Will's hand was stuck at a strange angle between them, but he kept on tugging at Mike, feeling Mike's breathing hitching against Will's mouth. When he felt Mike's fingers close around his cock tightly, attempting to set a steady place, Will groaned into Mike's mouth.

He loved Mike's lips.

They were fuller than his own and they were so soft and plush.

" _Will_ ," Mike panted out as his hips thrust upward harder than he had before, and a moment later, his cock was twitching and he was coming over Will's fingers and his own shirt. Mike movements around Will faltered as he groaned, his mouth lax against Will's mouth. When he pulled back, taking in a few deep breaths, he looked down at the mess he had made over Will's hand and his shirt, and then he leaned forward and kissed Will again, his hand moving around him once again. Will's hand went to Mike's hair—the hand that wasn't sticky with come—and he tugged at it as he began pushing himself forward, sliding into Mike's hand with more vigor.

Mike nipped at Will's lips, licking into his mouth, tasting the weed and strawberry gummy worms on his tongue, and then his body was jerking as he came in Mike's hand.

" _Shit_ ," Will sighed, his body tense as he felt the shudders of his orgasm wrack through him, making his fingers and arms spark. "Shit," he repeated, his voice a lot steadier after a moment of centering himself, and he let out a heavy, satisfied breath. "That was good," he commented and Mike laughed, lifting his fingers to brush away some of Will's hair from his forehead.

"I think I might need another shower," he said, glancing down at himself and the come that was drying on his shirt and stomach.

"Me too," Will agreed before licking his lower lip. "Then can we...You know, do the Chinese and _Dirty Dancing_?" Mike smiled gently at him.

"Of course," he replied, leaning forward to press a soft kiss to Will's forehead.

 **Let me know what you think x**


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